Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at podcasting.isfullofcrap.com. I’m your host, Laurence Simon.
This is Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Eighty-Six, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was Mustache
And we’ve got stories by:
Thomas
Jeff
Chris Munroe
June
Tom
Abernathy
Boomer Bob
Danny
Pete Wood
Sevda
Zackmann
Pau
Chris The Nuclear Kid
Steven the Nuclear Man
Paladin
Norval Joe
Jeff Hite
Planet Z
And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post.
Thomas
Joe was home on leave. He was on his second tour, so he flew stand-by to his home in Portland, Oregon where he was met by his wife and son. He exchanged a few words with his wife, gave her a thick roll of cash, then turned and climbed back onto the plane for his continued flight to Seattle, where he was met by his wife and daughters. He gave his wife a roll of cash, a long kiss, then turned to continue his flight on to Fairbanks where his pregnant wife waited for her kiss and roll of cash.
I knew I broke the record after re-typing my manuscript. The world record for the largest book was 750 leaves. My book started as a short story, then morphed into a memoir. I led a long and adventure-filled life as an insurance salesman, so I chose to write about the hundreds of incidents and anecdotes connected to my elderly clients – concentrating, and largely concerned with – the personal property insurance riders I wrote during my forty years in the business. The reviews of my 5,001 page, self-published tome left a lot to be desired, but I broke the record.
Jeff
I stood, not too close to this huge tree, and watched the leaves tumbling and falling from the branches as a light autumn breeze gently swept across the lake and past where I was waiting.
There was yellow, orange, red, and brown, in a variety of shades. Some the detritus was still soft and supple as though it had been alive and growing just moments before it fell, while other remnants of a summer now past were stiff and crunchy, life well spent.
I fired up the chainsaw and began cutting the thick trunk; there would be heat this winter.
Chris “Munsi” Munroe
The leaves on the trees turn red and gold and brown, and soon they’ll be gone.
I’ve a Scotch/Irish complexion, and I burn and peel in the summer, so when the fall breeze first blows I breathe a silent sigh of relief at having made it through another one. I grab a trenchcoat, an umbrella, and hit the streets to enjoy the season that seems made for me.
Soon Canadian winter will be upon me once again, and I’d be cursing the bitter cold. But at this moment, I’m too swept up in the breathtaking beauty of autumn to care.
June
“When the Leaves Fell”: Her wit was sharpest when the leaves fell.
That was how Granny rolled, even before her mind went into the long spiral of Alzhiemer’s failure. Halloween came with all its costumes, giving her plenty of fodder to heckle the grandkids.
“Are you supposed to be a whore?”
She asked me this the year I was a can-can-girl. The skirt was fabulous, every color of the rainbow hiding under a black silk shell. I said,
“Yes.”
At nine I thought that was what she wanted.
Mother grounded me for the first time that night, and Grandma stopped joking six years later.
Tom
When I heard of Hagakure I thought is there other places to hide? Could you be hidden in the bricks or hidden in the branches? I mean why not hidden in the water cooler or hidden in a bad book review about an obscure British poet? Then I founded out it had a semi-idiomatic meaning: doing good deeds without calling attention to oneself. Sounds a lot like true Charity. Don’t quite know how removing your lower intestine with steel can be constructed into a good deed, and the scream would limit that: Oh don’t pay any attention to me part.
Abernathy
She pressed the stapler firm against the leaf. Smiling she selected another and did the same. Each child from her class had their name perfectly printed on a Autumn colored leaf made of construction paper. The leaves scattered her classroom board cheerfully. She was down to her last one. A bright yellow leaf with the name Lilli upon it. She became heavyhearted. The teacher had no clue the hell the child had been through at home. Her guilt tugged at her. Instead of putting Lilli’s yellow leaf up. She brought it to her desk and slipped it into a drawer.
Boomer Bob
I went out my door this past morning
Feeling the chilled wind blow hard
I was surprised since there was no warning
I guess it was all in my birthday cards
I reached the age of 60 years last week
Now searching for what to believe
As a Baby Boomer I am over the hill’s peak
And have only myself to deceive
It is the time of the year we call fall
And I am ready to flutter to the ground
I wish I still had a summer’s youthful recall
But at least I leave this world more profound
Danny
I refuse to give my dog Freddie a treat until he calms down and stops barking, but Freddie won’t stop throwing a fit because he wants a treat. We’re having a Mexican standoff. There are leaves now matted in Freddie’s thick fur, remnants from our last walk, when once again I overindulged the little bugger by letting him roll in the grass and leaves. Good thing I know how to groom a dog, because Freddie needs to be groomed. I make a Freddie a deal, submit to grooming, he gets a treat. Instead, Freddie just turns away and leaves the room.
Pete Wood
Walking home through the park John kicked cheerfully through the fallen leaves, shuffling, listening to the sounds they made, feeling the resistance against his stride then… wondering what might be underneath, lurking there, waiting for him to trip, to enter their world. His pace slowed, he stopped shuffling and stepped out of the leaves, his mind racing he walked on, looking back. Were they still moving? Is that the wind, or something else…. Glancing at the path behind he wondered about the path ahead and he began to run towards the gates, the traffic and the clean pavement towards home.
The squirrel investigates her drey, finding the twigs, sticks and moss
secure in the forked branches, but the wind blew most of the leaves away.
Peering down, she sees piles of leaves below. She thinks, “I’ll collect
those!” She scurries down the tree, leaping near the bottom …Swoosh! She
lands in the leaf pile. She spends the day gathering. She pants with the
last load, covering the leaves with moss. Smiling, she burrows inside.
“Ah, a comfortable bed at last.” she comments, curling up, “Good night
autumn wind” she whispers falling asleep.
Zackmann
The Sugar Maples are so beautiful this time of year. I love leaves but hate raking them. Now, I have to rake them. I took a leave of absence to take my sisters to a Leafs game. Seems I am stuck here. For the first time I am looking forward to when autumn leaves and winter begins. They do not move as fast in the winter or at least I hope the people interviewed on the Zurvivalist KZOM Radio were right about that. I would not rake at all if the damn zombies wouldn’t insist on hiding under the leaves.
Pau
Outside it’s cold; it rains
“Sorry, we cannot go for a walk “- I explain to my daughter –“ It’s autumn: leaves fall of the trees”
I must bath her, prepare the dinner… She is hungry and tired. Me too.
Better, I think as I see the pile of work office that I’ve brought to home to check tonight.
Then, I realize I forgot to buy the dinner; luckily the shops are still open.
I tell her to stay alone: “Only ten minutes”.
But as I get home I see flying through the window the office reports while she shouts happy: “See mum… autumn has arrived!”
Chris the Nuclear Kid
I smack down the report. “I can’t do this! It’s just too stupid!” I exclaim.
“Too dang bad!” my boss Joe said. “If you aren’t going to work, then you won’t get paid, and you’re going to get fired!”
“Then fire me because I’m not going to do this dumb work. If I don’t have to do this, I’ll be happy!” I shouted.
Joe’s face got red. “Well, then, you’re fired! Get out!”
I walked out the door and felt the breeze blowing leaves across the road.
I wondered what I should do, then realized: Nothing.
So I just walked.
Steven the Nuclear Man
She left me.
In hindsight, I should have seen it coming – she started to wear makeup. First it was subtle hints, then bright reds and yellows. She began refusing my gifts. She just didn’t pay attention – her focus was elsewhere. Our conversations grew short as she turned… brittle.
Then, a bright clear October day, just before the first possibility of a frost, she left. She twirled off to adventure and unknown lands, a dancer spinning away from her partner.
It happens the same way every time.
I look at the spruce across the yard, and I wonder if it’s me.
Paladin
The leaves are green.
He stands resolute, calm, unmoved by any trouble. He scares away the monsters and stands tall through any storm.
The leaves are yellow.
He protects me from what’s coming, though I see no danger. I know there won’t be as long as he’s here.
The leaves are brown.
The immoveable is withering. The immortal is aging. The endless will soon end. He can protect me from anything. But not this.
The leaves are gone.
They say he will be asleep for a long time. Maybe forever. But I’m not afraid.
The leaves will be green again.
Norval Joe
Fly Paper Boy lay on his back with his arms spread out wide and felt like he was floating. But not in the water, he didn’t feel wet.
Light filtered through the leaves of the oak trees that leaned out over the edge of the cliff from which he had just plummeted.
Was this heaven? Was he dead? He couldn’t remember the painful impact with the jagged rocks in the river below.
“Hey Kid,” a gruff voice called. “Get over here before someone sees you out there.”
Chagrined, he crawled across the safety net to the security of a cave.
Jeff Hite
“It is beautiful don’t you think?” Bill said as leaves fell around them.
“Well if you like watching things going dormant in order to survive the hardest part of the year beautiful, I guess so.” Jill sniped.
“Do you have to be so negative?”
“Come on, enough of this. We have things to do, and watching leaves fall is not one of them, now or we’ll miss our window”
Bill Breathed in the simulated cold air one more time, and Imagined he could smell the wet leaves. Then he followed Jill’s lead striping naked and climbing into the hibernation chamber.
Planet Z
The sergeant counts sixty and shouts GO!
I run into the woods, tracking my prey with broken branches and crushed leaves in the mud.
Every thirty seconds I stop, listen, look around, and begin the chase again.
I hear a splash.
I stop, drop to the ground, pistol cocked and ready.
A splash ahead, a crack of a rock against a tree trunk behind me, and a car horn right next to me.
Decoy chips. Clever.
I roll to the side as the robot fires into the ground where I was.
Two shots, green light flashes.
The sergeant yells PASS!